


Q. How has Landry’s passing affected you?

by Gitaxian



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26159911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gitaxian/pseuds/Gitaxian
Summary: Snippets from a series of interviews conducted shortly after the end of the season 3 playoffs.
Kudos: 15





	Q. How has Landry’s passing affected you?

**RANDY CASTILLO:**

“The Tigers slogan was always “ _ Never Look Back _ , _ ” _ but Landry was the one who made it a motto. It never mattered to him what had happened last game, or last season. He was always in the moment, doing whatever he could do right now for the team.”

“I keep coming back to this moment, a couple days after we’d been knocked out by the Jazz Hands. Normally we would only ever see Landry when it was game time. The whole team and staff are in a meeting, poring over stats and charts from the season, talking about “ _might-have_ ” and “ _maybe_ ” and “ _if only_ ,” and then I hear the door open behind me, and it’s Landry for the first time we’ve ever seen him outside a game, looking confused. He asks something like “why aren’t we out on the field? Isn’t this when practice is scheduled for?”

“I guess without him around, I’m a little lost. He kept us moving towards the championship, and we did it. We won. Now what? I guess I feel a little lost without him.”

**DUNLAP FIGUEROA:**

“I had immense respect for Landry. If nothing else, he was a man who knew how to make a dramatic entrance, and I’m always appreciative of drama.”

“More than that though, he had a presence like no other. Utterly magnetic. Regardless of whose body he inhabited in the moment, it was always immediately obvious it was him from the way he carried himself. He projected this… this aura of invulnerability, as though if the whole world were to stand in his way he’d simply push it onwards with him.”

“And the tragedy of losing him so suddenly, it’s just… it’s like…”  
“I’m sorry, I need a moment.”  
[Dunlap did not return to the interview room.]

**PEANUTIEL DUFFY:**

“BECOMING AN ORDINARY HUMAN BEING WAS A DIFFICULT TIME FOR ME. IT TOOK MANY DAYS FOR ME TO ACCLIMATE TO MY NEW ORDINARY HUMAN FORM. LANDRY WAS ONE OF THE FEW ENTITIES WHO COULD TRULY UNDERSTAND THAT EXPERIENCE. TO UNDERGO THE RIGORS OF ENTERING A NEW BODY EVERY SINGLE GAME WAS TRULY COMMENDABLE. I LOOKED UP TO HIM FOR IT.”

“WHEN HE PASSED ON, I EXPERIENCED THE NORMAL HUMAN EMOTIONS OF GRIEF AND DISTRESS IN GREAT QUANTITIES. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A HOLE IN MY ORDINARY HUMAN HEART WHERE HE ONCE WAS. MAY HIS SOUL PASS SAFELY INTO THE BEYOND AND REST IN VIOLENCE.”

**FISH SUMMER:**

“I really thought I was prepared, right? Like, I knew it could happen to any of us, I’d seen all the other incinerations in the news, I thought I was ready. And yeah, of course I wasn’t. I don’t know how I managed to make it through that game. I just remember being fucking  _ angry  _ the whole time.”

“The first thing I did after the game was puke. I nearly didn’t get up the next morning. I just wanted to lie there in bed forever. Well, not literally because I’m a fish, but you get what I mean. Knowing that so many other people had gone through this, and just gotten up the next day and kept playing just made it worse. Like, I’d been respectful, sure, but how could I not see how much they must’ve been hurting?”

“In the end I just didn’t want to let the team down. No way I was going to let them lose because I was a no-show, even if I was a total wreck inside. I still can’t believe we actually pulled off a win after that.”

**MOODY COOKBOOK:**

“Landry, he was a good friend of mine. I’ve met very few people with such a fine appreciation for cuisine. Benefits of having tasted with a thousand different tongues, I suppose.”   
[Chuckles]

“I’ve lost a lot of good friends over the millenia. Too many. I suppose the one thing I’ve learned is that the world will keep on turning. No matter how apocalyptic it might seem in the moment, your state of mind is always transient. You’ll move on eventually, and trying to fight that is a bad thing. It hurts you, the people close to you, and the metaphysical fabric of your local plane of existence.”

“I do regret never taking the chance to invite him on the show. I’ll miss him dearly.”

**FAMOUS OWENS:**

[Famous Owens’ agent responded to our interview request with an apologetic email explaining that their fame results in an inundation of such requests and that his schedule is currently full. The agent did not respond to questions on what exactly it is that Famous Owens is famous for.]

**NAGOMI MENG:**

“Okay, so everyone knows Landry’s host got I-frames when he was summoned. I mean, that’s obvious because they didn’t get fried by the lightning strike. What a lot of people don’t know is that they also got I-frames when he left the host, but only for the same number of frames an incineration takes.”

“He could’ve bailed the moment he saw the Umpire coming, and maybe been safe, but when Umpires go rogue they don’t stop until they incinerate  _ someone _ . So he’s got maybe a second to decide what to do. Going for a frame-perfect trick in that situation is just completely insane. Too soon and Paula gets incinerated anyway, too late and they’d  _ both  _ get incinerated.”

“The fact that he managed to pull it off, not just perfectly but under that kind of pressure, is absurd. Landry was a legend, and that kind of skill is irreplaceable. We might never see someone capable of pulling that kind of stunt again.”

**ZION ALICIAKEYES:**

**“** It was just so sudden, you know? Like, I’d been chatting with him a few minutes ago, and now he’s just  _ gone.  _ And like, we don’t really know why the umpires do it, but for all I know it’s just dumb luck that it wasn’t me there.”

“I didn’t really know the guy that well. Not like Moody or Randy did, for sure. I guess I kind of idolized him. I joined the team because I wanted to be like Landry, and now…”

“I can’t really be that, I’m just some stadium imp who’s not even that good at the game. And if someone like  _ him _ can just vanish like that… I need to kick myself into gear, right? Get moving, become something before I go out.”

**JESSICA TELEPHONE:**

“I knew it would happen, but knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it any easier. In some ways, it’s harder. I learned a long time ago, from my perspective, not to dig too hard for what’s going to happen to me when there’s nothing I can do to change it. That just makes it hurt more.”

“It’s not always possible to avoid though. And no, I can’t tell you how I heard about Landry’s death in the future without damaging the timestream.”

“It was agonizing, getting closer and closer without being able to talk about it. I’m sure the team noticed how much it was impacting me, even if I had to avoid talking about it.”

“It’s funny, I sort of went through it in reverse. All the grief and guilt and sadness before he died, and now that it’s over, I’m already ready to move on.”

**REN MORIN:**

[The room begins to warp. Reality bulges and stretches, as though something is pressing in from outside. I/you/we are overwhelmed by the scale of it. The happenings in this room seem irrelevant in the face of it, barely worthy of the word real, a curtain that could be torn away at any moment. It becomes stretched and distorted, further and further, and then just when it seems poised to tear everything falls still. I/you/we understand that there is a hole. It cannot be seen, or felt, but I/you/we know it is there, and that it was not there before. Then the noise begins. It is grating, shrieking, building louder and louder, rippling out from the hole. I/you/we claw at it and at my/your/ourselves, desperate to shut it out, but every motion, every action, only amplifies it. The room which had seemed so insubstantial before is now impossibly massive, growing and growing the more the sound fills it, each reverberation and refraction only making it louder, until I/you/we are crushed under the impossible weight of it.]

[Then I/you/we reawaken, and the hole is still there but the noise is absent, and to I/you/us, its absence is worse than its presence.]

**HIROTO WILCOX:**

“This one time I woke up to a crack of thunder in the middle of the night. Which was weird because there’s no thunderstorms in Hades. So I take a peek outside, but I don’t see anyone in the stadium, so I head back to bed.”

“But then before I get back to sleep, I hear someone walking around outside. So I peek out of the hole and see Landry walking in holding something. Don’t know who was hosting him, not anyone I’ve ever met before. He walks up to the pitcher’s mound, and now I can see that he’s holding flowers. Real flowers, not sure how he got those down here. Anyway, he puts them down right on the mound and then touches them and there’s a zap and a little red flash and they catch fire. Then he just sits there, watching them, until they’re completely ash.”

“I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that we didn’t really know much of anything about the guy, right? We don’t know how he got so good at Blaseball, or what his life was like outside the game. He was more than just a player, he was a person, and I don’t want to forget that.”

**ALYSSA HARREL:**

[Alyssa Harrel could not be reached for interview as she does not exist. But if she did, she would express her condolences to the rest of the team and congratulate Landry for escaping from existence before her coming.]

**PAULA TURNIP:**

“I had no idea who he even was beforehand. I hadn’t been to a Blaseball game in years, not since… well, the last time I watched Yazmin’s team play. I don’t think she was very happy to see me again at first.”

“But anyway, there I am, standing around awkwardly in the locker room holding the jacket. I felt like I didn’t belong there, I kept wondering why I’d been picked. I knew what everyone knew about the process when I found it in my closet of course, but I had no idea how intense it would be. Those innings were the most alive I’ve ever felt. And then, right when we’re finally in sync, right when I really  _ get _ it, I see the umpire looking towards me. The next thing I remember is being surrounded by fire, and then I realize that it hadn’t touched me, that he’d given his life to save me.”

“The fact that he’d do that, for someone he’d never talked to, for someone he didn’t even know existed until that day... I couldn’t imagine myself being brave enough to do something like that. I suppose I haven’t exactly been a good person, up until now. I owe him everything for giving me the chance to change that.”

**YAZMIN MASON:**

“It’s been tough. I know I don’t really measure up to the rest of the team. Landry, the whole team really, they’ve all been so kind and supportive in spite of that.”

“I know it’s stupid, I know he wouldn’t want me to, but I still feel guilty over game four. Like I failed him. Like I failed everyone.”

“But I know he wouldn’t want us to look back like that. So I’m going to keep moving forwards. I’m going to become the best pitcher I can be. For Landry.”


End file.
